The Minnesota State Senate voted 35-32 today to pass S.F. 778, which would enable independent day care operators and personal care attendants who serve customers that receive state subsidies to organize unions. All Republicans in the chamber, including Sen. Julianne Ortman of Chanhassen, voted against the bill as did four DFL Senators (Terri Bonoff of Minnetonka, Melisa Franzen of Edina, Greg Clausen of Apple Valley, and Bev Scalze of Little Canada). The bill now moves to the House; which is expected to take up the bill on Saturday. It appears that there are sufficient votes in the House to pass the bill, which Governor Mark Dayton has indicted he would sign.

Republicans in the Senate subjected the bill to 17 hours of debate, reflecting the highly controversial nature of the bill. Unionization of such persons would be a different model than the traditional form of labor union, where employees organize and collectively bargain with their employers. If the union were to be approved in this case, independent day care operators and personal care attendants — who generally function as small businesses of their own or independent contractors — would have a union to work on their behalf in St. Paul, bargaining with state agencies on work rules and regulations and lobbying legislators on reimbursement rates. Care workers who provide services to clients that receive state subsidies but who vote against the union would be subject to “fair share” dues to cover a portion of the costs of the union’s representation as they would benefit from whatever changes the union negotiates.

Republicans have objected to the redefinition of the traditional union relationship introduced by this bill. Additionally, they point out that in some cases AFSCME Council 5 — which is seeking to represent the day care workers — would end up negotiating with other AFSCME employees over work rules.

These are indeed valid concerns — and that’s coming from someone who generally finds themselves in labor’s camp on these sorts of issues. The much-derided federal Employee Free Choice Act had a number of good reforms in it, for instance — such as equalizing the standards for certifying and decertifying unions and improving enforcement of certification elections.

But S.F. 778 feels like a step too far.

That’s not to say, though, that independent day care operators and personal care attendants don’t have valid concerns. Day care subsidies were cut by 2% in the last budget cycle, passing increased bills to strapped working class families and forcing hard decisions on providers of day care services. Personal care attendants, meanwhile, are besieged by low pay, long hours, and physically demanding work. They deserve better from state government than what they have received in recent years.

DFL majorities in the Legislature should focus on passing those reforms into law this session as opposed to passing a bill that looks like political payback. There’s no reason that we can’t increase reimbursement rates and address a number of the work rule issues that would be of great benefit to these vital workers. And if Republicans come back in the future and want to undo those changes, it shouldn’t be politically difficult to hammer them for it.

Every election cycle, we get the requisite story about Carver County’s long history of voting Republican. 2012 was largely a continuation of that trend, with Mitt Romney racking up nearly 60% of the vote in the County, and Congressional and Legislative Republicans winning re-election. But there were some signs that the “suburbanization” of eastern Carver County may be starting to make Chanhassen and Chaska look more like their Hennepin County neighbors than like the rest of Carver County.

Let’s start off with the U.S. Senate race. For the first time in recent memory, a Democratic candidate won the county. Senator Amy Klobuchar cruised to victory by a double-digit margin over Republican nominee Kurt Bills. Klobuchar won eight of the nine precincts in House District 47B (all of Chaska, precincts 3-5 of Chanhassen, and precincts 1-2 of Victoria), and tied with Bills in the ninth. Much of that has to do with Bills’s historical weakness as a candidate, but it also speaks to the kind of Senator Klobuchar has been. (Keep in mind, Klobuchar lost Carver County six years ago to Mark Kennedy). Klobuchar has taken a moderate, low-key approach in the Senate, focusing on consumer issues and taking centrist positions on civil liberties and foreign policy, as well as many business issues.

Another notable result was on the marriage amendment. If you look at House District 47B, the marriage amendment lost by nine points (45.4% yes vs. 54.6% no/no-vote). The weak performance of the marriage amendment (compared to expectations) in traditional Republican areas like Carver County can in large part explain why it failed on a state-wide basis.

Interestingly enough, this vote puts eastern Carver County’s legislators, State Sen. Julianne Ortman and State Rep. Joe Hoppe, squarely in opposition with a large block of their constituents (While Hoppe’s 47B voted solidly against the amendment, 47A voted in favor of the amendment, allowing it to win SD 47 with 50.1%). Both voted in favor of putting the amendment on the ballot, and Ortman fought back hard against allegations that she hadn’t been supportive enough of the amendment during her campaign for the GOP endorsement against Bruce Schwichtenberg. Will Ortman and Hoppe back off of their support for their party’s divisive social agenda?

Meanwhile, the Carver County Commissioner races continued to show trends began in 2010. In that cycle, the three incumbent commissioners on the ballot withstood challenges from the right. This year, with all five incumbents up for re-election thanks to redistricting, all five incumbents were victorious. Four of those incumbents fended off challenges from the right. Tom Workman was the exception, as he was the lone incumbent who faced a less-partisan challenger.

What does this mean? Is eastern Carver County poised to “turn blue”? It may be too soon to say that, but it does show that demographic trends are likely over time to make this area more competitive than it has been in the past. And Democratic candidates with the right mix of qualities can get a fair hearing from voters in these areas. Democratic efforts should be focused on party-building and creating the infrastructure to support and develop these types of candidates that can compete and eventually win in eastern Carver County. Klobuchar and State Senator Terri Bonoff are good examples of the sort of moderate candidates that would fit that mold.